Genesis, which is a Greek word translated from the Hebrew, the original Hebrew, which means
in the beginning. And so what Genesis does for us, it gives us the beginning of the doctrine of God
is what the beginning is. It's the beginning of the doctrine of God, of who God is, but also of
his creation. That is what we know about God, what we know about creation, about ourselves and about
salvation, it all begins right here in Genesis. What I'm saying is that if you read the Bible
correctly, it is not fundamentally about us. It's about God. And it's about who he is and what he
has done and continues to do. It's no accident that God is the very first sentence of the Bible.
And the name of God is referred to 35 times and dominates the first chapter. God is the subject
of the first chapter of the Bible. That's not often how we read it. The storyline of the Bible,
which is a single storyline, is a storyline that moves from creation to the fall, what God has done
to rescue it and renew his creation through grace, which takes us eventually to the end where he will
renew all things. It's a single storyline of the whole Bible. It's a storyline that has its foundation
in Genesis 1-11. And it's our focus, as Jess has said, in the lead up to Christmas.
Genesis 1-11 gives us the earliest of history of the world. It gives us this early history by relating to
us five stories. In Genesis 1-11, consists of five stories that all have the same structure.
The five stories are the fall into sin, the story of Cain, the sons of God marrying the daughters of men,
the flood and the tower of Babel. And the five stories have a fourfold pattern to them that's repeated.
Sin is described. God speaks, announcing the penalty for the sin. God then brings grace to the solution to
ease the misery that sin has caused. And then God punishes the sin. And the amazing thing, as you see in the first
11 chapters, is that as sin increases, so grace increases more and more.
And so therefore, Romans 5 comes to fruition in its very first chapters of the Bible. It's a foundation,
if you like, the pillars of the rest of the Bible, the message of the rest of the Bible.
And so today we're starting in the beginning of creation. And as we have just declared in the
Apostles' Creed, we believe in God Almighty, the creator of heaven and earth. So three things. If you've
got the St. Paul's outline there on the app, you'll see I've got three things there. Understanding creation,
practicing creation, and lastly, experiencing creation, or I've sort of thought this morning, might even call that
enjoying creation. But we'll get there. Okay. Understanding creation. Now, us modern people, especially those of us
with a Western heritage, when we read Genesis 1, we immediately think of the question, how?
How? That's the immediate thing. That's the very first question we impose upon this text. How? And Darwin's
theory of evolution springs to mind. We have questions about dinosaurs and the age of the planet and all
that sort of stuff. One of the crucial issues when we read the Bible, in fact, when we read any text,
is to ask the question, what is the author's intention in writing this?
And the key is to understand his intention in order to understand the meaning. And so as we open
Genesis, there is one thing we can be absolutely certain of. When Genesis was written, the author
wasn't thinking about Darwin's theory of evolution. At all. Not even remotely.
They weren't thinking about the cultural wars of the West. At all.
But since it's often on our minds, as Westerners, and particularly, and we want to impose something on the text,
I want to say something very briefly about it, and then I'm going to park it. I'm not going to mention it again.
Historically, there are at least six different views on what is meant by the six days of creation
in Genesis 1. Through the centuries, there have been Christians who have had a very high view of the Bible,
who have considered the reference to days in Genesis 1 as literally 24-hour periods as we know them today.
And there have been plenty of Christians also with an extremely high view of the Bible,
who have not seen it that way at all.
And to this day, friends on both sides still exist as friends.
The people who have not seen it that way have a variety of different...
They see the Bible as a variety of different types of texts.
They see that there's historical narrative, there's prophecies, there's poetry, there's songs.
Historical narrative makes itself clear with references to things like world events, people, times, eyewitness testimony.
Poetry, on the other hand, makes itself clear by things like repetitiveness and parallelism.
There are a few places, in fact, in the Bible where it's not entirely clear what it is that we're dealing with
when we read the text.
Genesis chapter 1 is one of those places.
Genesis chapter 2 is not one of those places.
Genesis 2 is historical narrative.
It reads like an account of what...
exactly what happened.
But Genesis 1 has quite a repetitive pattern.
Over and over again we read,
He said,
He said, and it was.
He saw, and it was good.
It was evening, and then it was morning.
Over and over again.
It has a repetitive pattern that is not the way that historic narrative is written.
I think Genesis 2 is a history of what God did,
but Genesis 1 is a song about God and what God has done.
Another example of...
is in Exodus 14 and 15.
Exodus 14 is a historical narrative about the crossing of the Red Sea,
and it's put alongside Miriam's song about the same event in Exodus 15,
which is clearly a song.
It is clearly poetry looking on the event of Exodus 14.
The key thing, though, is that wherever you land with this,
it's important to remember one key thing.
It is established fact that godly, Bible-loving people
who have given their lives to God's Word
have differed over the opening chapter of the Bible.
Faithful Bible scholars have landed differently on this issue,
and they got on.
It would seem over the last 20 years or so,
there's been much more of a war over these issues.
There are people who disdain those who hold to the literal reading of Genesis 1
as being primitive fundamentalists.
Likewise, there are those who regard as enemies of truth,
those who don't think these are literal 24-hour days,
as if Genesis 1 is the test for orthodoxy.
There is a harshness to the debate
that doesn't present gospel humility,
and it's not the kind of church that I want us to be at St. Paul's
as we discuss these matters amongst ourselves.
We have a great deal of humility towards one another.
If you want to know where I stand on the issue,
then I'm with the people who interpret Genesis 1 as a song.
Now, that does not mean that I give in to the theory of evolution,
because I don't.
It's a theory that has dominated the sciences
for just a little over 100 years.
That's all.
And it's a theory that is currently, to our day,
amongst physicists and philosophers,
as increasingly discredited
and losing its prominence due to flimsy evidence
and dubious hypothesis.
While Genesis 1 is poetry,
I'm certain that Genesis 2 and onwards is history.
But wherever you stand with this,
our goal should be to read this text
and notice what God is saying.
And what we know is that when God speaks,
the chaos becomes cosmos.
To come under God's word
is to move from disorder to order.
And our key job
is to do the hard work
of coming under what the Bible actually says.
And that's it.
I'm not going to talk about evolution there again.
Going to move on,
because I don't think it's the issue of Genesis 1.
So let's move on to my second point,
how it is that we practice the doctrine of creation.
And there are at least four things
about this that I think have very practical outcomes for us
as we look at the doctrine of creation.
First of all,
we see the goodness of creation.
Notice the repetition of God
and he saw and it was good.
God made it,
he said it,
came into existence
and it was good.
Eastern religions say
that the physical world is an illusion
and at one day it's all going to fade away.
Western religions,
coming off the back of the Greeks and the Romans,
say that fundamentally the world is bad.
The body and material world are bad,
but the spirit is good.
And only biblical,
only Christian faith,
Christian faith of the Bible,
has a high view.
In fact, the highest view
of the physical creation.
The storyline of the Bible,
the plan of God revealed in time and space,
is a movement entirely from creation to new creation.
It begins with,
the Bible begins with creation
and it ends with a new creation.
The plan of God is to resurrect bodies
into a new heaven and a new earth,
a new perfect physical reality.
Only the Christian faith speaks of that kind of reality.
Only the Bible has a vision of spirit and matter
existing in integrity forever.
And that has many practical implications for the Christian.
The Bible is filled with prophecy
that say the natural world that we live in
is but a shadow of what it is going to be like
when the Lord comes back.
That is great news.
We're not going to be going to clouds
and floating around as spirits.
We will be as alive,
in fact, even more alive than what we are today.
Isaiah refers to the coming of the Lord
of all creation as a great party.
Jesus reveals that he is, in fact,
the Lord of creation
and enjoys a party at his very first miracle.
where he turns the water into wine.
He's there at a wedding celebration.
The wine's drying up.
It's about to dip.
Everything's about to go bad for the wedding.
Jesus comes along and kicks it up a notch.
He's the Lord of creation.
He's the Lord of the party.
Jesus produces so much wine
it would have been impossible for them to consume it all.
Such is his abundance.
Jesus is not who religion has made him out to be.
God's work in Jesus to recreate his broken world
is centered on joy, celebration, and festivities.
The goodness of creation
is a profound Christian motive for playfulness.
Profound Christian motive for playfulness.
A great kiss.
A fantastic sunset.
A satisfying meal
is but a dim picture
of what we're going to eternally have
in the new heavens and the new earth.
And we have a fantastic foretaste of it now.
We can receive life gladly
and cherish it now.
The second thing we learn
quite practical implications for us
and I think it points to a balance.
And that is the finiteness of creation.
Again, something unique
about the Bible's creation account
and that is that there's only one source
of the creation.
All other ancient accounts of creation
have multiple deities
where the world is created
because they've been killing each other.
It's some kind of battle.
And the humanity was created,
the world was created
to serve the deities
who were trying to kill each other.
Here is an ancient account of creation
where all of the elements are created.
No element of creation
is divine in and of itself.
God alone is divine.
None of the creation is divine.
God alone is infinite
and to be worshipped.
Virtually all of the ancient religion
worshipped parts of the creation
because they saw them
as sources of divine power
linked to different deities.
So in the ancient world,
there were some who were
anti the created order.
It was all about appeasing the angry gods.
That's why creation existed.
They were therefore against pleasure.
They were against enjoyment.
They were against playfulness.
On the other hand,
in the ancient world,
there was the materialists,
which like modern secularists,
who said that it's all that we've got
and so we better make sure
that we worship it,
you know,
and worship physical pleasure
and wealth and power.
The modern secularist says
that this is all that we have,
this created order,
so consume as much of the material world
in possession and experiences
as you possibly can
before you die.
The Christian worldview
doesn't say that the material world is bad,
nor does it say it's all you've got.
You can do without it
because God is the most important thing.
When the Christian grasps the goodness
alongside the finiteness of creation,
then you are able to truly enjoy it
but also walk away from it.
That's why our holidays
are so quickly forgotten
because they're not the ultimate.
They're not meant to give you
the rest that only God can give you.
They're good
but they're not ultimate.
So the Christian is neither an ascetic
nor a hedonist.
The third thing we learn
is the unity of creation.
This is an interesting point.
Well, interesting to me anyway.
Way back in Greek philosophy,
there was this tendency
to a dualistic view of creation.
I've already mentioned it
where there's good gods and bad gods.
The material world was bad.
The spiritual world was good.
We see this thinking in fact.
Some of this thinking
is behind the New Testament book
of 1 Corinthians.
Some Greek religions believed
that there were two gods,
one good and one bad.
The interesting thing is
that this dualistic view of the world
has for some reason
always hung around the Christian church.
There's elements there
that have always hung around
the Christian church
despite the fact
that it's actually not in the Bible.
So many Christians
these days
are dualistic
in their thinking
and therefore
they are consistently fearful.
Fearful of world events.
Fearful that Satan
may get the upper hand on me.
Fearful of the spiritual realm.
They consistently pit
the spirit
against the material world
and therefore
live in fear.
And therefore
they view the world
in both
you're a good person
if you have the Holy Spirit
and you're a carnal person
if you
don't have the Holy Spirit.
Have the Holy Spirit
I'm good
if you don't
then everyone else
is wicked and terrible.
God creates both the body
and the spirit.
Everything
is his
or wisdom is his
or truth is his.
And so
a great deal of humility
those of you
who are in Christ
because you can learn
an awful lot
from those who are not.
The last thing we learn here
is the importance of creation.
God so loves the cosmos
that is why
John chapter 3
verse 16
says that
he sent his son
Jesus Christ
to save it.
God so loves
the cosmos.
He is so committed
to his creation
that he was willing
for the eternal son
to take on human flesh
and to dwell here
amongst us.
He is so committed
to the cosmos
that he will someday
resurrect us
and create a new heaven
and a new earth.
It means that
when the Christian
sees everything
that has gone wrong
in our world
God's perfect creation
we ought to be committed
to renewing it
in the same way
that he is committed
to renewing it.
When we see
the goodness of creation
we have a great deal
of motivation
to enjoy it.
When we see
the finiteness of creation
we can handle
not having a lot of it.
When we see
the unity of creation
we can humbly learn
from everyone
and everything in it.
And because
of the importance
of creation
we join in
with God's
renovation project
through the proclamation
of the gospel
and works of mercy
and justice
in our world.
So lastly
how therefore
do we
experience creation
or
potentially
enjoying creation?
creation.
This is the last
final point.
I think it would be
a mistake for me
just to end it there
where it was
encourage you to go out
and build a life
around the biblical
doctrine of creation.
The last point
is how do we
actually truly
experience
God
not just as
our redeemer
but as our creator.
Job chapter 38
God
asked Job
were you there
when I laid
the earth's
foundation
while the
morning stars
sang together
and all
the angels
shouted joy.
Psalm 19
says
the created
order
declares
the glory
of God.
The reason
why
nature
and the natural
world
is so
moving
for us
is because
it is doing
what Job 38
says
is doing
what Psalm 19
says
it is speaking
to us.
That's
its job
it is speaking
to us
it is proclaiming
something
it is
what it's doing
according to Psalm 38
it is
praising God
and speaking
to us
consistently
about the
magnificence
of God.
God
but Romans
chapter 1
tells us
that even
though creation
reveals God
a God of
eternal power
and divine
nature
humanity
in our
rebellion
against God
has suppressed
that truth.
It's like
we're putting
earbuds in
as the
creation
sings to
us.
every human
being
knows God
but no
human being
glorifies God
or gives
thanks to
him
is what
Romans 1
tells us.
We don't
acknowledge
our dependence
upon God
our creator
and we claim
independence
of him
instead.
But here's
the thing
again
from Romans
1
because
we are
primarily
made
by God
to worship
God
when we
reject God
we don't
just simply
stop worshipping
we don't
just simply
stop believing
as an atheist
will want you
to believe
we don't
stop that
we just
shift our
allegiance
to something
else
and worship
it instead
another object
our purpose
is worship
and so
there must
be something
that captures
our attention
and becomes
our hope
and our security
and our identity
and our meaning
we give
ultimate affection
to a created
thing
a good thing
made by God
rather than
the God
who alone
is worthy
of our
ultimate
affection
so rather
than worshipping
the immortal
we worship
what he has
made
and what
the Bible
tells us
is that
everything
that's wrong
in the
created world
is linked
to that
issue
alone
that issue
and the
Bible
tells us
that God
will hold
us accountable
for it
but the
Bible also
tells us
that God
has done
something
about our
biggest
issue
I'm not
sure if
you ever
noticed
this
for those
who have
read
in the
New Testament
and John's
Gospel
which we
finished last
week
but John's
Gospel
begins
in the
same way
that Genesis
begins
in the
beginning
was the
word
in the
beginning
was the
word
the Greek
word that
John uses
there
for word
is the
word
logos
and the
Greek
philosophers
the word
logos
had very
important
word
in Greek
philosophy
at the
time the
first century
and John
was writing
this in
Greek
culture
the Greek
philosophers
looked at
nature
they looked
at the
created
order
they saw
balance
they saw
harmony
they saw
design
in the
world
and they
concluded
that there
was a
cosmic
principle
of order
behind
the
created
world
and they
called
that
principle
of order
the
logos
of the
world
the logic
of the
world
the logos
is the
purpose
the reason
the logic
behind all
things
it's the
thing that
makes sense
of all
things
and so
as John
begins his
gospel
he comes
in with an
earth
shattering
category
the
logos
is not
a
principle
it's a
person
the
person
is the
designer
the
source
of all
life
the
one
who
we
are
to
align
our
lives
with
in
order
for
life
to
be
lived
well
by
us
and
we
are
told
five
things
in
John
chapter
one
about
the
logos
the
principle
the
person
behind
the
universe
firstly
the
logos
is a
person
secondly
the
logos
is a
divine
person
thirdly
the
logos
is an
eternal
divine
person
fifthly
the
logos
is an
eternal
divine
person
who is
the source
of all
life
and
did I say
fifthly
the
logos
is Jesus
Christ
now
walking
amongst
us
at
his
baptism
you
notice
this
in
Genesis
one
God
saw
and
it
was
good
and
then
down
in
when
he
creates
humanity
made
Adam
God
saw
and
it
was
very
good
very
good
and
then
the
John
says
the
logos
is
here
at
his
baptism
the
Holy
Spirit
descends
and
we
read
that
he
heard
a
voice
the
voice
was
God
the
father
saying
this
is
my
child
this
is
my
son
with
whom
I
am
well
pleased
do
you
know
that
is
the
first
time
since
the
garden
of
Eden
that
any
human
being
has
ever
received
the
blessing
of
God
it's
the
only
other
time
it's
happened
where
God
looked
and
said
I'm
really
happy
with
this
one
this
is
good
this
is
my
son
it's
the
only
time
you're
reading
the
Bible
since
the
garden
of
Eden
Jesus
Christ
God
the
son
had
the
delight
and
the
love
of
God
let
me
fast
forward
to
Easter
but
on
the
cross
he
cries
out
my
God
my
God
why
have
you
forsaken
me
on
the
cross
Jesus
Christ
was
getting
the
curse
the
word
of
condemnation
that
we
deserve
for
us
worshipping
the
created
order
turning
our
backs
on
our
created
God
Jesus
took
the
curse
so
that
we
could
get
the
blessing
he
became
bad
so
that
we
might
become
very
good
and
receive
the
benediction
of
God
the
blessing
of
God
Colossians
1
21
once
you
were
alienated
from
God
and
were
enemies
in
your
minds
because
of
your
evil
behavior
but
now
he
has
reconciled
you
by
Christ
physical
body
through
death
to
present
you
holy
in
his
sight
without
blemish
and
free
from
accusation
you
see
if we
believe
the
good
news
of
Jesus
Christ
God
the
Lord
God
coming
into
the
world
to
rescue
us
from
our
rejection
of
not
just
our
redeemer
but
of
our
creator
if we
believe
the good
news
of the
Christian
gospel
then it
becomes
God's
recreative
word
to us
where he
declares us
as very
good
much
loved
the word
of the
gospel
is what
we
receive
from
God
because
of what
Jesus
has done
for us
in
Jesus
and
only
Jesus
do we
get the
blessing
of God
we
finally
hear the
affirmation
of our
creator
you
are
very
good
you
are my
much
loved
daughter
you
are my
much
loved
son
with
you
I
am
well
pleased
forever
you
know
what
the
doctrine
of
creation
means
the
doctrine
of
not
just
creation
but
redemption
in
Christ
it
means
that
none
of
us
because
of
the
affirmation
we
receive
in
Jesus
none
of
us
needs
to
squeeze
that
affirmation
out
of
our
partners
or
out
of
our
children
or
out
of
our
vocation
or
out
of
our
travel
blogs
or
our
assets
or
our
education
or
our
culture
it
is
the
affirmation
that
only
our
creator
can
give
us
and
it's
the
affirmation
that
we
all
need
the
recreative
word of
the gospel
goes
deep
into
our
hearts
and
it
heals
us
from
our
innermost
deepest
hurts
and
it
drives
us
out
from
there
to
be
people
healing
God's
world
in the
beginning
was
God
in the
end
will be
God
he
created
the
universe
and
he
can
make
you
new
now
have
you
accepted
Jesus
Christ
into
your
life
not
just
as
your
redeemer
but
also
as
your
creator
it
will
have
profound
impact
on
how
you
live
tomorrow
season
of
park
the
underneath
Idaho
is
you
can
you
imagine